Toyota has asked the government of Japan for permission to begin road testing a plug-in hybrid on public streets. The test will reportedly begin within a month, indicating that Toyota may not be so far off from commercializing the technology.

Whichever company is the first to develop a plug-in hybrid will probably find consumer demand well beyond today's 100,000+ annual Prius sales.

Plug-in hybrid vehicles that can run for up to 100 miles between recharges are expected to be commercially available by the end of the decade. You can have one today, if you are willing to pay the price.

Hybrids Plus of Boulder, CO, and Cal Cars will convert the Toyota Prius to a pluggable model, but the upgrade can double the cost of the vehicle.

There are also a few plug-in hybrid school buses currently on the road today thanks to IC Corporation and Advanced Energy. School buses are the perfect application for plug-in technology since they usually travel less than 100 miles at a time, and they are not in use most of the time, so they have plenty of idle time to recharge and function as electric only vehicles.

Finding an outlet to recharge your car and stressing the power grid are potential problems, as noted by Popular Mechanics and in an earlier report by me.